An old friend returns to the Conflicted Community for a chat about his home country of Yemen. Yes, you guessed it, it’s the irrepressible Baraa Shiban… Thomas and Baraa once again discuss the complex and evolving situation in Yemen, focusing on the impact of U.S. administrations, the role of the Houthis, and the broader regional dynamics in the Middle East. The impact of the new Trump administration has entirely changed the situation on the ground there, while increased sanctions and strikes fro...
May 28, 2025•25 min
In this episode for our Conflicted Community, we continue our survey of the Israel-Palestine question with another interview, as Thomas Small engages with Rob Geist-Pinfold, a lecturer in defense studies and international security. This week we focus particularly on the Israeli settler movement. The conversation delves into the historical roots of the settler movement, its evolution from a secular to a religiously motivated initiative, and the intricate relationship between settlers and the Isra...
May 21, 2025•24 min
Giri Rajendran is back for round 2 for the Conflicted Community, continuing our conversation about Donald Trump and his so-called ‘grand strategy’. This second part of our conversation delves into the decline of U.S. global power and the historical context of rising powers, particularly in relation to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In this conversation, Thomas and Giri delve into the complexities of the Ukraine conflict, the implications of NATO's expansion, and the strategic calculations of b...
May 14, 2025•24 min
This week on Conflicted we are drawing our narrative arc on Syria to a close with our second episode with filmmaker and political activist, Matar Ismaeel. Last time Matar told us about his experiences filming protests in 2011 as the Syrian revolution began, being tortured in Assad’s prisons, and witnessing firsthand the brutal siege of Southern Damascus. This episode Matar finishes his remarkable story with us - from recounting how Friends of his were radicalised by a ISIS to the battles he witn...
May 07, 2025•1 hr 14 min
The Conflicted Community is back to talk about the headlines we can’t seem to escape - Donald Trump and his tearing up of the economic world order. This episode, Thomas sits down with Giri Rajendran, the holder of no fewer than 3 degrees in economics and finance from the London School of Economics. Giri has worked as an economist in transatlantic defence before moving to work in finance, first in private wealth management and then on to asset management, most recently at BlackRock, the largest a...
Apr 30, 2025•24 min
The Conflicted Community returns with another episode on the complex and multifaceted Israel-Palestinian conflict, focusing on the ideological dimensions that shape perceptions and identities. This time, Thomas invites on Tom Khaled Würdemann, a PhD candidate at the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Heidelberg in Germany on the perspective of Palestinian intellectuals towards Israel between 1960 and 2000. He teaches there and at a German police college, and the central focus of his ...
Apr 23, 2025•1 hr 36 min
Conflicted returns with another episode in our series on the Syrian Civil War, this time with a new contributor, who begins today a two episode arc where we’ll be looking at the Siege of Southern Damascus… Thomas Small has invited on Matar Ismaeel, a documentary filmmaker and political activist from Masyaf, Syria. Now back in his homeland after years of exile, Matar speaks to us from Masyaf itself, relaying an extraordinary story of resilience and courage in the Syrian capital. Matar tells us ab...
Apr 16, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 5Ep. 16
This week, Thomas speaks with Hamza Howidy, a Palestinian activist originally from Gaza now living in exile in Germany. Hamza shares his extraordinary story of growing up under Hamas rule and the constant threat of Israeli military action on the one hand, and the brutality of Hamas on the other. Hamza was forced to leave Gaza due to his involvement in protests against Hamas in 2019 and 2023, taking the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean from Turkey to Europe to do so. Hamza offers a vita...
Apr 09, 2025•22 min
This week for the Conflicted Community we begin a series of conversations about the conflict in Israel and Palestine, with Palestinians themselves, to shed some light on the Palestinian perspective of this most complex of conflicts. And this week it is the turn of Khalil Sayegh, a Palestinian Christian political analyst, who shares his personal journey from Gaza to Ramallah, to Washington D.C. In this episode, Khalil tells us about his opposition to Hamas, the impact of war on his life, and give...
Apr 02, 2025•24 min
Conflicted brings to an end our three part series with Ronnie Hamada, a Syrian Kurdish civilian, whose experience of the Civil War has been thrilling us over the past few episodes... Thomas and Ronnie open with the impact of the Battle of Aleppo on the Kurdish province of Afrin, highlighting the rise of jihadist groups and the challenges faced by the Kurdish community. Ronnie also shares his harrowing experiences living under siege in Afrin, describing dire conditions, economic lockdowns and foo...
Mar 26, 2025•1 hr 24 min
Thomas and Aimen are back together for another Q&A! This week we answer your questions on the many and varied crises that seem to be engulfing the Middle East and the world in 2025… Thomas and Aimen begin by analysing the complex and tumultuous situation in Syria, exploring the recent resurgence of violence, the role of disinformation, and the internal conflicts among the Alawite community which have been sparking new fears of intense violence. They also discuss the new Syrian government's respo...
Mar 19, 2025•24 min
This week on Conflicted, Ronnie Hamada is back with Thomas to describe his experiences as a Kurdish civilian during the Syrian Civil War, as we continue our retrospective on that most complex of conflicts. And this week, after setting up some Kurdish history last time, Ronnie takes us through what it was like to live through the Arab Spring protests as a university student, where he saw his classmates attacked by Assad backed thugs, and as violence increased around him by the day. In a gripping ...
Mar 12, 2025•1 hr 11 min
This week for our Conflicted Community members, we return to Yemen for an interview with, Dr Elisabeth Kendall, an academic whose work has covered so many varied manifestations of the country’s culture, politics, and the conflict that has engulfed it for the past decade. Elisabeth is a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Cambridge, where she is also the Mistress of Girton College. Her research explores how militant jihad groups use 'soft' culture (poetry, literature, son...
Mar 05, 2025•25 min
This week on Conflicted, we begin in earnest our retrospective on the Syrian Civil War, where we will be inviting actual Syrians from a multitude of different perspectives, to tell us about their experiences of the war. After setting the scene with our old friend Wassim Nasr last time, over our upcoming episodes, we’ll be creating a kind of narrative history for you, our listeners, as we make sense of this most complex of conflicts from as many angles as we can. In this episode, Thomas invites o...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr 10 min
This week for our Conflicted Community members, we have an interview with the Egyptian political activist Dalia Ziada, whose incredible personal story crosses so many of the major events in the modern middle east, from the Arab Spring, to October 7th. Dalia is an award-winning Egyptian writer and political analyst whose work focuses on governance, geopolitics, and defense policy. In Egypt, she co-founded the Liberal Democracy Institute in 2015, she is the Executive Director of the Center for Mid...
Feb 19, 2025•24 min•Season 5Ep. 26
Conflicted takes on… the Syrian Civil War. In the wake of the fall of Assad, with the Syrian Civil War over, at least for the moment, Conflicted is bringing you a bit of a retrospective. In the coming episodes, we’ll be inviting Syrians and other people who experienced the conflict, from a multitude of different perspectives, onto the show to tell us about their experiences of the war. In doing so, we want to create a kind of narrative history as we make sense of this most complex of conflicts f...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 30 min•Season 5Ep. 12
The Conflicted Community is back for another Q&A for all of our dearest listeners. This week, in the first time Thomas and Aimen have got together since the Gaza ceasefire deal, they discuss its implications for the region and the world, with the help of listeners' questions. From the motivations of the parties involved in the ceasefire, to the question of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, to what Trump has planned for the region and some questions about the Palestinian Authority and the fut...
Feb 05, 2025•23 min
Conflicted comes to the end of our Ethiopia series with an episode beginning at the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, and charting the country's tumultuous course through the late 20th century. This was a time characterised by a brutality the country had not witnessed before, as the Communist military dictatorship, known as the Derg, wreaked havoc on the country. Ethiopia in the 70s and 80s was one dominated by horrifying episodes of mass death – from the Red Terror which engulfed the coun...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Last week, a deal between Israel and Gaza was struck to bring back the Israeli hostages and to bring an end to the bloodshed which has engulfed Gaza over 15 months of fighting, since October 7th 2023. It’s a deal which has brought relief to many, not least the families of hostages and civilians in Gaza, but also questions from others who see Israel as having failed to fully dismantle Hamas and finish the war aims they began their assault on Gaza with. In this episode, recorded last week on Febru...
Jan 22, 2025•47 min
Happy New Year to all of our dearest listeners! In our second episode of 2025, Thomas and Aimen are doing a Q&A session with all of your questions posted on Discord, and we’ve got some excellent ones this week. We’ll be doing a post-mortem of the zombie ideology of baathism now it has been seen off in Syria; we’ll look at why al-Julani is delaying elections for four years time; we’ll ask how HTS will be able to maintain territorial integrity in the future; and we’ll assess how Hamas still has an...
Jan 08, 2025•18 min
To bring in the new year, we have a special Conflicted Community episode this week– an interview with none other than Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative British MP and ex Minister of State for Security. Tom is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a veteran of both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s Conservative cabinets. He remains a big figure in the party, having run unsuccessfully for party leader in 2024, and is one of the most outspoken of all British MPs when it comes to the UK's securit...
Jan 01, 2025•1 hr 9 min
After a short emergency interlude into Syria, Conflicted Season 5 returns to our exploration of the fascinating land of Ethiopia. Moving now to the 20th century, where one man dominated the country: Emperor Haile Selassie, King of Kings. Haile Selassie is a name synonymous with a few things: Ethiopia’s age of regal power in the 20th century; being the only African monarch to withstand Western colonialism; and, of course, the religion in Jamaica which reveres him as a god, Rastafarianism. But Hai...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 5Ep. 10
ANOTHER EMERGENCY EPISODE Things are, as ever, moving at lightning speed in the Middle East, as last weekend on December 8th, Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian regime fell. After 13 years of civil war, and more than 50 years of his family’s rule, in an extraordinary turn of events rebel groups from the south and the north marched on Damascus. Assad has fled to Moscow; the future for Syria is unclear. It’s one of the most momentous events in modern Middle Eastern history, so this week Thomas invited...
Dec 11, 2024•41 min
EMERGENCY EPISODE In another hugely dramatic turn in the Middle East, the Syrian civil war has reignited. On November 27th 2024, Abu Mohammad al-Julani’s HTS reconquered huge swathes of the North West of the country, including the key city of Aleppo. Conflicted is here with an emergency explainer episode to try and decipher exactly what has gone on in Syria over the past week, and indeed the past decade, to give you the context you need to understand it. Thomas and Aimen are going back to a coun...
Dec 04, 2024•1 hr 32 min
This week for the Conflicted Community, Thomas and Aimen are giving their take on, you guessed it, the US election and the return of Donald Trump to the White House. That’s right, dearest listeners, it’s Donald Trump part 2, and this time, who knows what’s in store for America, the Middle East and the world. After assessing how Trump got in and a look at his eccentric picks for top jobs in his administration, we take a look at what this all means for US foreign policy in the Middle East – will w...
Nov 27, 2024•25 min
Conflicted’s tour of Africa takes another turn, this time to the East, as we head to the horn of Africa to learn about that most ancient of lands… Ethiopia! Ethiopia is the cradle of humanity – the place where some of the oldest remains of homo sapiens have been found, and its history through antiquity is equally rich. In this episode Thomas and Aimen are going way back in time to tel us about great African civilizations like the Aksumite Kingdom, and all the fascinating stories that intersect w...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Conflicted is back, continuing our trip across La Françafrique this week, with a survey of the last 10 years in Francophone West Africa, and yes, you guessed it: it’s insurgencies, jihadi movements and coups galore! Thomas and Aimen open up with a discussion of the anti-jihadist activities being carried out by the French in the Sahel since 2013, including the infamous operations Serval and Barkhane. But as jihadi movements grew, the French found themselves in hot water, which got even hotter as ...
Nov 06, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 5Ep. 7
On this week’s Conflicted Community episode, we invite the researcher and author Jack Margolin onto the show, to talk about his recently published book, The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army. Jack is an independent researcher and expert on modern mercenaries, focussing on conflict finance, guns and crime in data, who previously worked with the The Center for Advanced Defense Studies. Continuing our Africa focus this season, Jack and Thomas discuss how Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of...
Oct 30, 2024•24 min
Bonjour tout le monde! In this week’s Conflicted, Thomas and Aimen are going continental as they continue their survey of Africa, with the first of a two part series on French West Africa, aka La Françafrique! France’s West African colonial possessions are relatively unknown in the English speaking world, but from Chad to Senegal, their histories are fascinating, and remind us of the disturbing continued tentacles of colonialism on the continent… In this first episode, Thomas and Aimen take us b...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 5Ep. 6
This week we’re thrilled to bring our Conflicted Community an interview with a guest who we all at Conflicted are great fans of – British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore! Simon is an award winning historian of bestsellers including Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Young Stalin, The Romanovs and his most recent work, The World: A Family History. But today we are here to talk with him about the newly updated version of his 2011 book, Jerusalem: The Biography. At the one year anniversary of Octo...
Oct 09, 2024•57 min
